


yesterday's cherry pits

by okayantigone



Series: hisoka’s adventures with time travel [2]
Category: Hunter X Hunter
Genre: Fortune Telling, Gen, Time Travel, hisoka is roma, hisoka's childhood
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-01
Updated: 2019-04-01
Packaged: 2019-12-30 16:31:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,908
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18319061
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/okayantigone/pseuds/okayantigone
Summary: when he was a child, hisoka met a fortune teller, who told him the most magnificent fortune, about a boy princess locked away on a mountain, and a castle in the sky he'd conquer one day.//or the one where hisoka dives back years into the past to warn his younger self of the future;





	yesterday's cherry pits

there wasn’t much to do in the village in the summer. if this was last year, he’d have been working the strawberry fields, but mama had sold their patch of land, and no one had left any laundry to be done by them today, so there was nothing to do.

the other children were all playing or away with their parents who could afford to take them away, but no one ever wanted to play with hisoka, because of his golden eyes and dirty clothes.

mama had been well in the morning, she’d made her own breakfast and heated a pot of rosehip tea, and she’d tucked one of the blossoms in his hair, and let him have a few of the cherries one of the women down the road left in exchange for some dresses being mended. mama was so good at needlework, but her eyes got tired quickly these days, and her hands shook more and more.

she’d used the rosehip dress to tell him his fortune, and then suddenly, like a scythe swiping through the wheats, was too tired to speak, so he’d put her to bed.

he was still sucking on the cherry stone, sitting on the fence, and looking out the road towards the village. it wasn’t much of a fence, really – just a few wooden plies stuck in the ground, marking the end of their garden, and the border where the road started. they’d used most of what the actual fence had been for firewood last winter.

 if someone had any odd job for him, he would see them coming first. he could sew, as long as it wasn’t too delicate, and clean shoes, and do laundry. Or sing a song, or any number of things. there was very little hisoka morow hadn’t done for money in his short seven years of life. he was meant to start school this year but he knew very well mama didn’t have seven gold pieces to pay the school director. that was fine. hisoka didn’t need schooling. that was for the rich kids. He could survive only on his wits- as all morow’s did. that’s what mama said, at least. she didn’t know to read or write none neither, but she was still the best fortune teller in the world, and come winter, while the other children were in classrooms, learning the names of dead kings, she’d show him how to divine the names of future emperors in the cards. it was a promise.

the august heat was brutal. he felt is pressing down on him hard, unbearable, almost. the air was simmering.

that’s when he saw the man. he knew everyone in the village. it was too early for field workers to return, and any of the rich people wouldn’t be walking alone on foot. there weren’t many travellers round these parts.

hisoka instantly stood up, and ran a hand through his hair. he was ready with his whole spiel. Hh could mend his cloak, or shine his shoes, or dance and sing, or tell him his fortune in a cup of tea… in exchange for a copper piece, _at least_.

the stranger was walking at a slow, unhurried pace. he wore fine clothes, and his hair was a bright blood-hued red. the closer he came, the more details hisoka could make out.

his boots were a shiny perfect leather, the heels high, like a woman’s shoe, like he’d seen the grocer’s wife wear once. she’d sneered at mama in the market, so he tripped her and ran away, before anyone could see him, so everyone thought it was because of her shoes.

the stranger stopped in front of the fence. his face was painted, pale and porcelain perfect. there was a teardrop drawn under one eye, and a star under the other. he was smiling.

“hello there,” he said. his nails were painted the same outrageous red as his hair. and he had golden eyes, just like hisoka did.

“you gotta hide your eyes,” hisoka said, without thinking.

“oh? and why’s that?” the stranger asked. he had a warm smooth voice. hisoka often imagined that’s what his father may sound like.

“cause people in the village don’t like it if you have gold eyes. they don’t like me none, see?” he pointed to his own face.

“i do see,” the stranger said. “don’t worry about me.”

hisoka shrugged. “it’s just a free warning. but if you’ve come all this way, lemme ask if there’s any stuff you need doing...” he instantly felt stupid. the man’s clothes were perfect, and his shoes were shiny, but still, he couldn’t miss a potential customer. “i can shine your shoes, or mend your clothes, or show you round the village. or I can sing you a song, or tell your fortune ...” he got out in one breath.

mama always said that you weren’t supposed to tell a paying customer their real fortune. you had to make it up. tell them they’d find true love or be very rich, or live in castles in the sky. that’s what they paid to hear.

the real fortunes were only for people who wanted to know them. mama was a bit of a big liar that way. she’d told hisoka’s fortune once. that he’d be very rich one day, and live in a castle in the sky. and he’d known she was lying, just like he knew, by the tea dregs, that she wouldn’t be alive in winter to teach him how to read the cards.

the stranger was still smiling patiently.

“a fortune? oh, dear me, what a sweet boy you are. you see, i’m a fortune teller too.”

he grinned, showing his perfect teeth. hisoka’s little heart fluttered.

with his extravagant clothes and golden eyes, this man was probably a traveller from one the big caravans, who told fortunes along the merchant roads.

“would you like me to tell you yours?” he asked warmly.

hisoka shook his head.

“I can’t pay you,” he said quickly, “it wouldn’t be fair.”

“let’s make it fair. i’ll take the cherry pit in your mouth, and in return, i won’t lie to you.” the stranger was already shuffling a deck of brightly painted cards. his hands were so graceful, long nimble fingers moving quickly as he made the cards dance in the air.

hisoka stared at them eagerly. he wanted to know his real fortune. but you could never tell your own fortune. so he spat the cherry stone into his hand and held it out.

“please tell me!”

hisoka stared down at the child. his clothes were dirty, held together by mother’s love alone, and his face was so gaunt, his wrists and ankles, bird-thin. how had he ever survived being this small?

he shuffled and reshuffled the cards, putting all his learned theatricality into it. the child’s eyes glowed up at him, impossibly big, and curious and earnest.

how strange it was, to look down and see himself, hungry and afraid, and desperate to know the truth. he looked at his past, always, through a fog. some days, he even forgot about this hungry child, sucking whatever sustenance he could find from the bones of whatever his mother had managed to feed him that day. bungee gum, indeed.

he laid the cards out carefully.

“listen to me, young man,” he said, voice catching in his throat.

he plucked the cherry stone from the child’s eager hand and put it in his pocket for safekeeping, where it knocked against his phone, his hunter license, and the keys to the apartment he now shared with his lovely murder doll, illu-chan. he kneeled carefully in the dusty, yellowed grass of the road. The child mirrored him, sitting with his legs crossed in a mock-lotus.

“when you leave this village, and this island… you’re never going to come back again.you are going to be very rich,” hisoka began. “and you are going to live in a castle in the sky, very far from here.”

that was true. how kind his mother had been, to only tell him the good parts. and how he hadn’t believed her then, and how he’d laughed when he was finally named floor master in heaven’s arena.  

the child scoffs. hisoka shakes his head.

“hear me out,” he says, moving his hand over the cards, to the queen of spades, “you are going to have … a difficult life. you are about to enter into the hardest years of it. you will be hungry, and you will be sad, and for a long time, nothing will be alright. things will go wrong, and no one will look at you and when you –“  
he draws his hand in a fist. “when you cry for help… people are going to pretend like they didn’t hear, and you will never find out why.”

he moved his hand to the queen of hearts. “but. you are going to meet someone who will make it all worth it. someone very beautiful, and very special is waiting for you, who will be ready to stand up and applaud even the parts of you no one else cheers for… and because of that person, you will have to  - you will do incredible things. and everyone will know your name.”

he taps the king of spades with his lacquered nail. “there will be many men who will be cruel to you. and you will be cruel to them in kind. here is what you must remember: do not trust the man named moritonio – he is a liar. learn everything you can from him, but don’t trust him. say it.”  
“don’t trust a man named moritonio,” the child repeats obediently. hisoka’s heart feels… like something.

“and another thing,” hisoka says. “there is a boy… a beautiful boy. a princess. he lives in a castle, on top of a mountain, and he is guarded by a dangerous wolf monster, and a dragon. that boy… he doesn’t know it, but he is waiting for you. when you are done with moritonio… waste no time. you must go to kukuroo mountain… and _save illumi zoldyck._ it’s the most important thing you will ever do.”

hisoka laps up the stranger’s words like magic. the way his hands move over the cards, the way he speaks. don’t trust moritonio. and _save illumi zoldyck._

“is he the one? the special one, who’s gonna make all the bad stuff worth it?”  
the stranger nods with a faint fond smile. “he is.”

he picks up the cards, reshuffles them, and then makes them disappear with a flourish, and takes a deep bow, smiling brightly.  
hisoka claps.

“thank you, thank you!” he says dramatically, salutes gracefully.  
“oh, and another thing,” the stranger throws over his shoulder, “when the time comes for you to fight chrollo lucilfer… pick a desolate area without a single bystander… just trust me on that one.”

hisoka watches the stranger walk down the road until he disappears.

don’t trust moritonio, but learn from him. save illumi from kukuroo mountain. fight chrollo lucilfer in a desolate area. okay. he can probably do that.

and at the end of it all, he will be very rich, in a castle in the sky.

he repeats the fortune to himself, all the way through winter, when he needs to choose between saving the firewood, or burning his mother, when the ground is too cold to bury her in it.


End file.
